captduggs

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animal kingdom season one thoughts

i finally finished season one of animal kingdom, and since i haven't been live-tweeting like i have in the past, i thought i'd just dump all my thoughts from the season here, so enjoy! i'm typing this out as i start the S2 finale hehe. spoilers ahead obviously.

overall the show is so good, the writing, acting, character development, and plot throughout season one was great and i'm glad that the show is more than just the shawn hatosy hype lol

SPEAKING OF SHAWN. i'm in awe. i had seen clips, i'd known that he was a good actor, but just from what i've seen of him in season one as pope has been insane. the way he can act with his eyes to show all of pope's dilemmas is fantastic, i truly don't think words can describe how good he is in this role and it sucks that it was "wasted" in that he got basically no recognition for it.

pope is a great character, he's so complex and he's written so well that you're forced to wrestle with how to perceive him given the different between who he is, could be, if he wasn't so tightly wound up in smurf's game. his problems are so deeply rooted in all the bullshit he's had to go through his entire life that you can't even judge his actions and believe that they're all done on his own accord. this is displayed so well through him having to kill cath and then get through that as he realizes just how much smurf controls his entire life; to what extent that's worth it (it's not). this coupled with his life situation as a convicted felon (the only one in the family?) makes it even harder for him to fully get out, even without smurf's game. he's definitely my favorite character but cmon.

i mean i don't even have enough to say about smurf she's a complete piece of shit, but the complexity is fun to watch so we'll see how they try to "explain" all of this.

i'm loving the way they're setting up j and the way he's going to develop as the show continues. he's introduced as someone who's supposed to be different, better than the rest of the cody's, but he's not. he said it himself in the finale, "he's a cody," just like the rest of them. even though he didn't grow up as smurf's puppet in the same way, this trauma is generational, he got a piece of it from julia, and it's only going to spiral as the show continues. the way tidbits have been shown is great, him not crying or showing any other emotion when his mom died, the way he lashed out on tommy(?), how he manipulated alexa and the cops, and finally the way he was eyeing smurf at the end of the episode while toying with his gun. insanity. he's clearly the smartest of them all too, so he's going to be key in everything moving forward. will be fun to watch.

craig and deran, haven't seen a lot of them yet, but they're role within the family is intriguing. they're nothing but the brawn, but then (from what i've seen anyway) because of that they've gotten to avoid a lot of smurf's ~less~ manipulative mess.

last one, baz. he's so hot i'm sorry. BUT SUCH A FUCKING SELLOUT. he is terrified of smurf and he'll never admit it but he feels so indebted to her that he won't speak out even though he is by far in the best situation to get out for good. baz thinks he has his own game that he's running on smurf, but he's getting played over and over and over again. he's probably going to fall apart but i guess we'll see what happens.

that's all i got for now! will continue to keep y'all posted.

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every time i see a glimpse of his eyes a piece of me dies a little

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random pope moments that make me bark

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LENA ISN'T BAZ'S KID???

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just the concept of him being so detached when his mom died but then also going back to the apartment and looking for somewhere to live that's not the codys. the symbolism (in my opinion) of the lights not turning on. him already started to exude the violence he's been surrounded by after not even 72(?) hours with the codys?

this shot of j now what if we all just kill ourselves

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this shot of j now what if we all just kill ourselves

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oh my god this is fucking crazy

starting animal kingdom the voices got me

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starting animal kingdom the voices got me

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posting so much about the pitt on here and twitter but just be prepared for me to be absolutely insufferable when chicago fire comes back. stellaride baby girl on the way? it's joever.

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the concept of jack abbot being traditionally tight with money without even being that conscious about it, but that his one vice is grubhub. like he orders from that app thrice a week minimum. i feel like he knows how to cook and just chooses not to?

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thinking of this and my mind immediately went to the concept of widowed jack abbot having a google doc or spreadsheet detailing every movie he's watched since his wife died, since watching films together used to be something they loved. he includes his rating of the film, and any other thought he had about it; like his own version of letterboxd. a bit later, he starts including who he watched each one with, if anyone: robby, robby, robby, dana, robby, robby, robby, robby, shen and ellis, robby, and then, mohan, mohan, samira, samira, samira, samira, samira, samira, samira, samira, samira, samira, samira.

movie nights at jack's turn into a multiple-times-per-week occurence. more like movie days once samira moves to night shift. he takes her through all of the star wars movies, talking nonstop about all of the lore, even going through the shows like mandalorian and even the animated series (he's a nerd for more than just medicine you know). then, of course, he has to share his "classics" with her: ghostbusters, back to the future, airplane!, top gun, the karate kid, the goonies, footloose.

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no because the yaz announcement made me spiral

it’s that time again…….

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this summarized my feelings about stellaride so well oh my god. stellaride and stella kidd especially has been so important to me and their story is so important on television.

Honestly Stellaride will forever be that heterosexual ship that I will always go to bat for because I just think especially with certain networks that cater to gender and societal norms. Stellaride being Stellaride on an NBC procedural for 10 years now is just so important.

And whilst the reddit of the show will always have misogynists whinging because it's the Stella Kidd show and that's so bad and awful. I think it's so wonderful seeing a relationship like Stellaride on television being center stage and the poster relationship of the one chicago universe. In a world where society is going backwards in many ways we still have Stella Kidd standing tall and Stellaride being themselves.

We see a m/f relationship where there is no gender roles whatsoever within it. For as many scenes we'll see Severide kissing Stella's forehead or cheek or simply holding her. We see just as many of Stella doing the same. We see a woman of color who would do things deemed masculine be loved and cherished by a man who sees her for who she is. Severide fights for her lung because he understands what being a firefighter means to her and has been her biggest cheerleader for her career. We get to see Severide a man feel safe to cry and show his emotions. We see a relationship where many of the big moments they like to celebrate by themselves first. A relationship of equals. A loving relationship between two best friends who are still deeply in love to this day. A relationship with struggles that they work through together.

It's beautiful and wonderful. And it makes a difference to see that be normalised for ten years. The representation matters. And Stellaride have never been one singular representation.

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[captduggs]

nai - black - nineteen - she/her - american british jamaican

about me! lover of sports, tv, film, music, and comics especially: baseball, indycar, f1, basketball, chicago fire, the rookie, the pitt, johnnyswim, kneecap, zach bryan, nightwing, captain america, and the flash i'm more active on my sports and media twitter accounts, but put any of my longer thoughts on here! my carrds go into more depth about my favs: sports + media dni: racist, homo/transphobic, maga, zionist

my works:

East Side of Sorrow (Tim Bradford Character Study/Backstory Fic): Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

tv + film playlists that i've made: chenford normal people the pitt stellaride (personal fav) ted lasso

other socials: ao3, letterboxd, pinterest, spotify

enjoy!

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all i’ve been thinking about the past few days

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oh i love the idea of him being an introduced love interest for our senior resident doctor samira mohan, and especially him being a conflict for her and jack. walk with me.

he's handsome, tall, "sweet, charming, and kind-hearted," all the things jack thinks he's not. he still wants samira but begins to self-sabotage thinking he's not deserving of her, this patient is the much better option.

samira goes on a couple dates with him, they're great, he's great, but he's not the grey-haired one-legged army vet that keeps staring at her from across the ED on night shift.